Audiotex is a generic term for any automated two-way information service that provides telephone callers with the ability to access information, select services or products, store or forward messages, or make other decisions by means of the telephone. Audiotex services are generally automated, i.e., the services may be rendered without the intervention of any live human being.
The user of audiotex services receives audio prompts via the telephone and indicates his/her decisions by pressing the keys of the telephone keypad. More rarely, the user might indicate decisions by dialing a rotary telephone or by speaking over the telephone to a voice recognition or voice actuation device. Voice recognition refers to the translation of the user's speech into text while voice actuation refers to detection of the user's vocal energy.
Examples of audiotex applications are services which enable telephone callers to hear sports and financial reports, make arrangements for travel and entertainment, and select and order merchandise over the telephone. Audiotex also includes voice messaging services which provide automated means of storing, forwarding, or processing recorded messages.
Conventional audiotex services present the telephone caller with audio prompts comprising an explicit menu of choices, such as "If you want financial information, press 1 on your telephone keypad; if you want sports, press 2; if you want weather information, press 3." The telephone caller then makes a decision by pressing a key on the telephone keypad. As a result of the user's decision, the audiotex service branches the user to the next menu, or decision point. Another audio prompt is given, and the user makes another decision. Prompts are successively given and the user makes decisions until the transaction is completed. Thus, in this method of presenting audiotex services, the user must traverse a hierarchical decision tree comprising explicit menus of choices.
The conventional method of presentation and control of audiotex services may be problematic to the user for several reasons. First, the hierarchies of menus used in current audiotex services are oftentimes lengthy, deep, and tedious to the caller. Consequently, the user may experience problems navigating through this hierarchy. The user may, for example, get lost in the decision tree structure of the menu hierarchy because he made an incorrect decision and was branched to an unintended prompt by accident.
Secondly, besides navigational problems, the conventional method of presentation and control for audiotex services may pose problems to the novice user who expects a more consistent assignment of keys to functions. In conventional audiotex services, keys are typically assigned a different meaning at each decision point. For example, the user may hear in one audio prompt that he should press the "1" key for financial information or the "2" key for sports information. Pressing "2", he may then hear that he should press the "1" key for baseball information has been assigned to different functions: financial information in one menu and baseball information in the next. This reassignment of particular keys to different functions in different menus may result in confusion and dissatisfaction with the operation of the service.
In view of the shortcomings of the conventional methods by which audiotex services present information to users and by which users control transactions in audiotex services, it is an object of the present invention to provide a new method by which an audiotex service may present audio information to the user and enable the user to control the transactions of that service. More particularly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for controlling audiotex services which is analogous to the means by which users operate conventional commercial radios.